I had a nice weekend and start to the week, and while it was pretty rainy today over the last few days I had time to listen to talks and books for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an interesting talk by Alberto Lusoli on the implications of AI on technical film crews at Toronto Metropolitan University https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJhPQcRyps8

Next was an intriguing talk by Eugenia Rho on challenges in designing generative AI-based interactive systems at the UC Irvine Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKXDN-N96BE

Next was an engaging conversation with Divya Singhal on global business ethics, ethics education, and more on the Stakeholder Podcast https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/show/stakeholdermedia/id/40215165

Next was "The Invisible Gorilla" by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons. The core of this book is an excellent review of inattention, albeit with a more introductory, anecdote-heavy bent. Chabris and Simons expand on their famous gorilla suit experiment, demonstrating that other seemingly obvious anomalies are often ignored in ways that are mostly impossible to predict. The second half of the book wanders pretty far from this area, however, becoming more of a standard pop social science book that was popular around this time. While these parts are totally fine, they're unspectacular and are better examined in other books. A lot of the examples the the authors bring in are also ethically problematic, particularly with regards to racism and law enforcement, with the authors often ignoring macro and social causes. Still highly recommend https://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/

Last was "The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Scientific Modeling," edited by Tarja Knuuttila, Natalia Carrillo, and Rami Koskinen. While I read this book cover to cover, you almost certainly shouldn't do that. This is a good textbook broadly about modeling in science - the philosophy behind it, its meaning in different fields, and its applications. If you're teaching a course on a particular modeling topic this book will almost certainly have a selection of chapters that will be relevant for students. If, however, you're just interested in this very broad topic I would highly recommend the chapter on idealization by Collin Rice and the chapter on models and statistics by Johannes Lenhard https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Philosophy-of-Scientific-Modeling/Knuuttila-Carrillo-Koskinen/p/book/9781032071510